The process of writing up memory work is still part of Phase 3. Writing both requires and facilitates integration of material. It is also likely that theoretical formulations will be clarified, and even revised, during the process of writing. Since memory work is a collective enterprise, writing cannot be separated from further discussion (another challenge to a familiar distinction). Drafts of papers will have to be read and discussed by the co-researchers, and this may generate new ideas and changes to the original analysis. It is hard to be sure when a memory work project has been completed, and writing it up does not necessarily achieve a sense of closure. As Crawford et al. (1992:
51) observed: ‘Writing this book has led us to reflect once again and to ask ourselves when if ever the process of reappraisal and reflection will end’ (my emphasis).
Memory work research can be written up in different ways. Following the intro-duction and methodology sections, the presentation of findings can be structured around constructions (e.g. ‘Women as Objects’, ‘Women as Monogamous’ and ‘Women as Seductive’; see Kippax et al. 1990), themes (e.g. ‘Condom Visibility’, ‘Pill Invisi-bility’ and ‘The Long-term Relationship’; see Harden and Willig 1998) or topics (e.g. ‘The Hair Project’, ‘The Body Project’, ‘The Slavegirl Project’ and ‘The Legs Project’; see Haug 1987). In all cases, this is followed by an integrative discussion section in which the theoretical implications of the research are addressed in some detail.
‘Saying sorry’: an example of data analysis in memory work (Crawford et al. 1992)
In Emotion and Gender: Constructing Meaning from Memory, Crawford et al. (1992) discuss the social construction of emotions such as happiness and hurt, fear and joy, guilt and shame, anger and rage. In their book, they present memories written within the context of a memory work group. The group’s collective analysis of these memories attempts to trace the processes by which group members developed their emotions. To generate memories for analysis, Crawford et al. used several relevant triggers, such as ‘being happy’, ‘danger’, ‘crying’, ‘play’, ‘holidays’, ‘being praised’ and
‘fear’. In this section, I illustrate the process of analysis in memory work by looking at the memories produced by Crawford et al. in response to the trigger ‘saying sorry’.
The group produced five memories that constituted the pool of memories for cross-sectional analysis. This is Ann’s memory:
She was aged between 4 and 6. It was evening, her mother in the kitchen cooking dinner. She was playing on the carpet near her father’s feet. He was reading the paper, sometimes talking to her, sometimes responding to her questions or com-ments. It was a warm night, he had taken off his suit coat. Absorbed in her game she didn’t notice him falling asleep until he failed to respond to one of her remarks. His hands were tucked behind his head, his mouth slightly open, he was snoring lightly. She crept to him giggling to herself, anticipating his delight as she
initiated one of their tickling games, watchful as to whether he was really asleep.
He pretended a lot. At the first touch of the cotton shirt covering his armpits his eyes startled open, his mouth erupted an ‘ugh’ of anger, his hand stung across her face: ‘Don’t you ever do that again’. She cried loudly enough so her mother heard (or perhaps she heard him shout) and came in. ‘What happened?’ And after the explanation: ‘She didn’t mean to upset you’.
The group’s textual analysis of Ann’s memory drew attention to the memory’s emotional tone, which is characterized by sharp contrasts and contradiction. Delight is quickly transformed into fright and surprise. We are presented with an image of a loving father who plays ‘reciprocal games’, yet his response to being tickled is anger and violence. The role relations presented in the memory are characterized by a discrepancy in power between Ann and her father. Even though the tickling game is described as ‘reciprocal’, Ann is punished when she attempts to initiate it. Her apology (which is, in fact, not explicitly referred to in this memory) is a way of placating the father to prevent further punishment, rather than an expression of regret or an acceptance of guilt. The reference to ‘her mother in the kitchen cooking dinner’ while her father is ‘reading the paper’ invokes traditional gender roles. The mother’s intervention to restore harmony also reflects a gendered social cliché.
Finally, the mother’s defence of Ann – ‘she didn’t mean to upset you’ – constitutes an apology on Ann’s behalf and is therefore also an attribution of responsibility to Ann for the incident. As a result, Ann is positioned as being responsible for her father’s anger.
The other group members’ memories of ‘saying sorry’ reflected many of the themes that emerged from Ann’s memory. Cross-sectional analysis of the five memor-ies led to the identification of common patterns. First, the group members’ expect-ations that memories of ‘saying sorry’ would contain references to emotions such as guilt, shame, repentance or regret were not met. Instead, the memories invoked feel-ings of confusion, fear and indignation. ‘Saying sorry’ was not an expression of regret but rather an attempt to deflect adults’ anger. Second, the sequences presented in the memories suggested that no wrong-doing had been intended. Instead, protagonists’
attempts to behave in an ‘adult’ fashion had been interpreted as a challenge to author-ity. In four of the five memories, the protagonist had acted in what she perceived to be a reasonable, even mature manner (e.g. initiating a game, reading the newspaper, saying a prayer, defending a club house) only to be met with disapproval by adults (father, grandmother, mother, parents). ‘Saying sorry’ was a way of recognizing that adults had power over children (to punish them, to hurt them, to make them apolo-gize) but not that they were right. As a result, a sense of injustice and feelings of humiliation prevailed.
The identification of these common patterns led the group to ask questions about the social relations within which their experiences had been constituted. To what extent and in what ways did the protagonists’ actions challenge the social relations within which they took place? What kind of commentary did they make on these relations? What purpose was served by making them apologize for their actions? A discussion of these questions allowed the group to move to a more theoretical level of analysis.
Here, group members attempted to contextualize their memories and to under-stand the wider meanings of their actions at the time. For example, in Fay’s memory her mother reprimands her for reading her aunt’s newspaper without permission. Fay is made to apologize to her aunt. Fay’s actions were embedded in a specific set of social relations. She and her mother shared a house with her aunt and two other female relatives during the war years. The aunt was the breadwinner. She occupied a powerful position within the household. Although ‘difficult’, the aunt was treated with respect by the other women who tried not to annoy her. Within this context, Fay’s actions constituted a challenge to her aunt’s authority. Fay’s apology to the aunt was necessary to restore power relations within the household: ‘For the sake of “oiling the social mechanism” it was essential that Fay be made to apologise’ (Crawford et al.
1992: 63).
Similar processes could be observed in the other memories. In three of the five memories, ‘saying sorry’ served the purpose of restoring the existing web of social relationships. In addition, all the memories positioned the protagonists as being responsible for other people’s well-being. By being made to apologize, the girls were taught to accept responsibility for the effects that their actions had on others, even where these were unintended. Crawford et al. (1992) proposed that this process is gendered, in that adult women tend to feel responsible for other people’s emotional well-being even when they have no power to control it. The episodes remembered by the group can, therefore, be understood as instances of female socialization.
Overall, Crawford and co-workers’ (1992: 73–4) analysis of memories of ‘saying sorry’ suggested that:
children construct a number of emotions – anger, defiance, glee, shame, guilt . . . in the context of a complex of relations around issues of responsibility and auton-omy. In most of the memories discussed, our actions are actions of children trying out our wings, pushing at the boundaries. We try to be adult amongst adults, or we try to be one with our peers; we act as we believe others expect us to act, we reciprocate, we test our competence. Adults often respond to these actions by punishing us . . . Our actions are viewed as irresponsible and incompetent . . . Children define transgression in terms of adult punishment. Our autonomy is threatened by the punishment and the implicit (and often explicit) admonition not to repeat the action.
Limitations of memory work
Memory work is a recently developed research method with a relatively short his-tory and a limited range of applications. Introduced to English-speaking readers by Haug and colleagues in 1987, it has inspired Australian researchers in particular (e.g.
Kippax et al. 1988, 1990; Crawford et al. 1992; Pease 2000). Its domain of application so far has been the gendered body and its practices (e.g. Crawford et al. 1994; Harden and Willig 1998; Koutroulis 2001; Gillies et al. 2004). As the method is gaining in popularity, a number of theoretical and practical limitations will have to be addressed, which include the following.
Theoretical limitations
The relationship between past and present
Memory work uses memories of past events because these events, together with the way they are subsequently constructed, are seen to play an important part in the construction of the self. One of the challenges that faces memory work researchers is to clarify the relationship between the subjectively significant event that gave rise to the memory and the memory that is subsequently written about it. Memory work researchers are not concerned with the accuracy of the written memory. It is not important whether or not what is described really happened in just the way that it is recounted. Rather, what matters is the extent to which the written memory captures the meanings that were invoked by the event at the time. If, as Crawford et al. (1992:
40) propose, ‘The task of memory-work is to uncover and lay bare the earlier under-standings in the light of current underunder-standings, thus elucidating the underlying pro-cesses of construction involved’, then it is imperative that we can clearly differentiate between ‘earlier’ and ‘current’ understandings.
But to what extent is this possible? How can we know whether a particular written memory does indeed reflect the meanings attributed to the event at the time? To what extent can a memory produced now ever capture what was then? For instance, from a discursive psychology perspective (see Chapter 6), a text such as a written memory tells us much more about the requirements of the context within which it is written than about the past. Memory work researchers may counter that there are differences between memories that capture earlier meanings and those that reflect current under-standings. For example, Crawford et al. (1992) note that their childhood memories had an immediacy that was not present in their adult memories. The former made less use of clichés and cultural imperatives, and they seemed to be less rehearsed. This suggests that, even though both childhood and adult memories are (re)construc-tions of past events, there are differences in the extent to which they are ‘worked over’. However, despite the relevance of this observation, memory work is left with the question of how to differentiate, systematically and theoretically, between then and now.
The nature of memories
Memory work is based on the assumption that memories of events that involved conflict and contradiction, novelty and unfamiliarity, can tell us most about the pro-cesses of self-formation. This is because such events require reflection and reappraisal in relation to what had been taken for granted previously. These events are significant because they throw light on what was socially constructed as problematic at the time, how perceived contradictions may have been resolved and with what consequences for the individual’s sense of self. It could be argued, however, that habitual, routine events, which are repeated many times and which require little or no reflection, may also impact significantly upon our developing sense of self. It may be that, precisely because we do not reflect on some of our everyday activities, they have the power to shape who we are. It may be that those practices that we engage in unthinkingly are the ones that make us ‘grow into’ our embodied subjectivities. Crawford et al. (1992:
154) do draw attention to the fact that ‘problematic’ and ‘habitual, mundane, ordin-ary’ events are, in fact, interdependent in that the former are necessarily defined in relation to the latter. That is, mundane events ‘and their habitual nature form the context from which “problematic” events derive their problematic nature’. However, memory work does not engage directly with memories of events (or activities/
practices) that were expected, unproblematic or routinized.
Practical limitations
Problems with group work
Memory work takes place in a group setting. One of the strengths of memory work is its ability to allow participants to analyse and theorize their memories collectively.
Individual memories are explored in detail (textual analysis) before they are compared with the other memories within the pool (cross-sectional analysis). This approach to analysis ensures that both the richness of individual memories as well as their social embeddedness are recognized and theorized. However, group work creates its own problems.
First, the emergence of group norms within the memory work collective is likely to influence both production and analysis of memories. However comfortable group members feel with one another, it is likely that certain memories will be deemed either inappropriate or irrelevant by members and will, therefore, not be written (or not be written in a particular way). In addition, expectations of what kind of memories should be written, or what kind of features written memories should contain, are likely to develop as the research progresses. For example, Ann’s memory of ‘saying sorry’
discussed earlier is actually a second version that Ann wrote after reflecting on the fact that her mother had not featured in the first version. The fact that Ann noticed her mother’s absence in particular (as opposed to other absences) was probably a result of the group’s interest in emotion and gender. It is interesting to note, within this context, that Crawford et al. (1992) dedicated their book ‘to our mothers’. This is not to say that such a focus leads to bias; in fact, remembering without a focus is not possible.
However, we need to recognize that what is remembered and how it is remembered is not independent of the group’s concerns. Similarly, contributions to the group dis-cussions during textual and cross-sectional analysis are also likely to be influenced by emerging group norms.
Second, the ideal of running a group without status differences in membership can be difficult. The person who decides to set up the group may be a more experi-enced researcher than those who join the group. Also, having initiated a memory work research project, such a person may then be expected to lead or facilitate the group.
However, the presence of a facilitator does undermine the sense of collectivity neces-sary for analysis.
Third, even though memory work aims to generate insights into the ways in which selves are formed within sets of social relations, its interpretations are necessar-ily grounded within the groups that have generated them. Knowledge produced through memory work is potentially generalizable because the social relations within which group members produce(d) their memories characterize societies rather than
individuals. However, until many more memory work groups have produced analyses of memories relating to the same or similar topics, our insights must remain limited.
Crawford et al. (1992: 42) acknowledge that, ‘Confidence in the relevance of the outcome of memory-work to persons other than those taking part in memory-work groups can best be achieved by ensuring heterogeneity of the groups themselves’.
Pease’s (2000) work with men’s groups constitutes a welcome attempt to do just that.
Three epistemological questions
To conclude this chapter on memory work, we need to think about its epistemological stance. We need to be clear about what kind of knowledge claims can be made on the basis of memory work research. As in previous chapters, three epistemological questions will help us to explore this issue.
1 What kind of knowledge does memory work aim to produce?
Research using memory work is concerned with the processes involved in the appropriation of the social world by the individual. It works with written memories to gain a clearer understanding of how individuals construct meanings, and thus also themselves, within particular social relations, over time. Memory work is based on the assumption that individuals do not simply model themselves on others or act out prescribed social roles; instead, they are actively creating themselves as they seek meaning and pleasure within a circumscribed social space. Memory work removes the distinction between the ‘knower’ and the ‘known’ by letting a collective of researchers study themselves through their own memories. This means that memory work adopts a hermeneutic approach to knowledge production. This involves a concern with mean-ing in context and the claim that interpretation requires knowledge of the context from which actions derive their meanings (see Rennie 1999). Here, the researcher engages theoretically with the experiential; that is, memory work ‘does not give prior-ity to either subjective experience or theory; rather it sets them in a reciprocal and mutually critical relationship’ (Crawford et al. 1992: 42). As a result, the knowledge produced by memory work is interpretative and reflexive.
2 What kinds of assumption does memory work make about the world?
Memory work assumes that the way in which people experience the world is the product of the social construction of meaning within a set of social relations. Here, an individual’s ‘reality’ is not directly determined by social and material structures;
instead, it is the individual’s psychological appropriation of these structures that gives rise to his or her experience of the world. At the same time, however, memory work acknowledges that such constructions of meaning are fundamentally social in nature, which means that experiences and perceptions of the world can be shared, particu-larly within social or cultural groups. Furthermore, even though social constructions are not fixed reflections of an external reality, they do have continuity and they
instead, it is the individual’s psychological appropriation of these structures that gives rise to his or her experience of the world. At the same time, however, memory work acknowledges that such constructions of meaning are fundamentally social in nature, which means that experiences and perceptions of the world can be shared, particu-larly within social or cultural groups. Furthermore, even though social constructions are not fixed reflections of an external reality, they do have continuity and they